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Since 2010 the Audi Urban Future Initiative has been a platform for an international and interdisciplinary dialog about the future of mobility in cities. Urban planners, mobility specialists, data researchers and designers develop specific solutions in cooperation with Audi experts for conveying people quickly and conveniently from A to B and making the best possible use of space in cities. The Initiative regards itself as an incubator for new ideas that enrich the discourse about networked mobility and improve the quality of life in our cities

Recent Press Releases

Audi CEO Rupert Stadler presented the cornerstones of his “Urban Agenda” on Monday, announcing that networked mobility technologies for the mega-cities of tomorrow will be a key market. At the presentation of the Audi Urban Future Award 2014 in Berlin, executive board chairman Stadler said: “If we succeed in decoding the DNA of mobility, the city will become predictable.” Then it would be possible to avoid traffic congestion and to enhance the quality of life. Digitalization would then bring about a new cooperation of the car and the city. Audi therefore plans to grasp this “once-in-a-century opportunity” by using new technologies to improve the flow of information between cars and urban infrastructure. Stadler announced worldwide development partnerships with major cities.

The winners of the third Audi Urban Future Award are now known: The Award, at 100,000 euros the world’s highest-value prize for innovative mobility solutions, goes to Mexico City. The competition team headed by the renowned architect and city planner Jose Castillo impressed the international jury with its “operating system for urban mobility.” Its heart is a data platform with which cities can design their transportation planning according to needs and drivers can flexibly adapt their behavior to the latest situation. Under the motto “the next leap in mobility,” four interdisciplinary teams from Berlin, Boston, Mexico City and Seoul competed for the Audi Urban Future Award with their innovative ideas on tomorrow’s mobility. “The two mega-trends of urbanization and digitalization will radically change mobility in large cities,” explained Rupert Stadler, CEO of AUDI AG, at the Award presentation in Berlin.

On the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Audi CEO Rupert Stadler demanded, “finally tear down walls in the fields of business and politics.” In his dinner speech at the end of the Falling Walls Conference at the Brandenburg Gate, he appealed for the creation of more shared standards for the common economic area of 800 million people in the planned transatlantic trade agreement between the EU and the USA (TTIP). He stated, “This is even more important than abolishing import duties, because differing regulations make things unnecessarily complicated and expensive for our industry.” At the same time, the Audi CEO appealed to transport planners in metropolises to design their infrastructures to be just as intelligent as the cars of the future will be. This will allow space in cities to be used better and will improve the quality of life.

The composition of the jury for the Audi Urban Future Award 2014 has been decided. A panel of nine experts will choose the winner of the Award, the world’s highest-value competition for innovative mobility solutions with prize money of 100,000 euros. The well-known mobility researcher John Urry from the University of Lancaster in England will chair the jury. The renowned researchers and practitioners from all over the world will gather in Berlin in November to meet the competitors in this year‘s Award and to assess their mobility proposals. On 10 November they will announce the winner.

Audi’s second Stakeholder Forum in Berlin: The company discussed the mobility of the future with approximately 120 participants today. The interdisciplinary discussion focused on automobile connectivity with infrastructure, road users and mobile applications. The automobile manufacturer wants to further intensify the open exchange of opinions and experience with experts from the fields of business, science and politics.

“The next leap in mobility” – this is the motto of the Audi Urban Future Award 2014. Four teams of experts from four cities will present their ideas for solving the problems of urban mobility. The projects from Seoul, Berlin, Boston and Mexico City take different approaches, but have one thing in common: they aim to improve mobility in large cities and enhance residents’ quality of life. The intelligent automobile plays an important part in this.

Four fundamental breaks with the past show the way to the future of urban mobility. This conclusion arises from research and dialogue with urban planners, architects, sociologists and mobility experts in the context of the Audi Urban Future Initiative. With the theme “The Next Leap in Mobility”, four interdisciplinary teams are entering this year’s Audi Urban Future Award to validate theses about urban change in four cities: Berlin, Boston, Mexico City and Seoul. The competition entries relate to specific current urban development projects. A jury with an international composition will present the Audi Urban Future Award 2014 in October to the best proposal.

In cities of the future the automobile will take on a new role, as it meets all the requirements for fulfilling a key role in city traffic: it is mobile, equipped with sensors, can collect data and is networked with its surroundings – today already. Now the city and the car have to come together and cooperate closely on technical solutions for a future with a high quality of life.

How many minutes will I spend stuck in a hold-up today? How long will it take me to find a parking space? Commuters all over the world ask questions like this – among them more than 330,000 people who commute daily to work in the city center of Boston. The population of Boston increases during the day by 41 percent – a huge challenge for its transportation systems. At the International CES in Las Vegas (6 to 10 January 2014), the Audi Urban Future Initiative shows on the basis of research results how commuters move through the city and provides an outlook on how technologies can contribute to efficient and comfortable travel from A to B.

Cars use crowd intelligence to reach their destination intuitively, buses find passengers rather than vice versa, and mobility is negotiated on a marketplace. What sounds abstract is in fact based on a fascinating data logic. Three completely different ideas about how data can shape urban mobility tomorrow are available for voting now at www.audi-urban-future.com. Three teams of experts from the USA explain in short videos why they want to take part in the Audi Urban Future Award 2014. The team chosen as the Internet community’s favorite will be announced by Professor Rupert Stadler, chairman of the executive board of AUDI AG, on 6 January before the opening of the International CES in Las Vegas (7 to 10 January 2014).

In 2050 seven billion people will be living in cities: What forms of mobility will exist? And how will they be networked? Audi and the renowned Columbia University reflect the most urgent questions of future mobility with five hypotheses, which are now publicly presented for the first time. Furthermore, with the Boston City Dossier, Audi is investigating the specific shaping of intermodal mobility. The brand with the Four Rings is presenting both projects at this year’s Ideas City Festival, run by the New Museum in New York (1 to 4 May).

A city like São Paulo with its “mobility blockages” gets moving. The streets of Shenzhen in the Pearl River Delta in China once again become places where people like to spend time. In the region between Boston and Washington the mobile “American Dream” is reinvented. A look at Mumbai focuses on human interactions that may seem insignificant at first sight but in fact maintain the economic development and dynamism of the city. And in Istanbul the behavior of inhabitants in public spaces expresses collective wishes related to mobility. These themes and – in part – dreams were tackled by five international architectural practices that are taking part in the Audi Urban Future Award 2012. Their designs are all about the future of mobility in the five metropolitan regions – about challenges and specific solutions, which ideally can be transferred to other cities and thus have an exemplary quality.

The Audi Urban Future Award 2012 is presented to the American architecture practice Höweler + Yoon Architecture for their proposed concept for modern urbanization in the Boston/Washington metropolitan region. With their ambitious planning and architectural idea of the “shareway” the American team of architects revolutionize commuting between places of living and work. Their basic idea is to merge individual and public transport by means of a new kind of mobility platform. This combines existing infrastructure with intelligent flows of traffic and networks. For their holistically controlled traffic system Höweler + Yoon Architecture are awarded prize money of 100,000 euros.

Tomorrow’s urban life and mobility are key issues for Audi. The exhibition for the second Audi Urban Future Award shows how people will live and work in their cities in the future. From 12 October five international architecture offices are presenting their visions in the Hasköy Spinning Factory in Istanbul. The exhibition opens officially today and will continue until 26 October.

How will we travel in 2030? How will we live in megacities? In this year’s Audi Urban Future Award, five architects from five metropolitan regions from all over the world have taken on the challenge of working out a vision for the future of mobility in their cities. A jury with an international composition will award the prize for the best architectural proposal on October 18 in Istanbul.

The Audi Urban Future Award 2012 has set itself the aim of working out a new understanding of future mobility in collaboration with the six participating offices of architects and urban planners. This is the purpose of the exchange of ideas between Audi experts and architects from conurbations ranging from São Paulo to Tokyo at the“Metropolis & Mobility Dialogue” – the event that starts off the second cycle of the Award.

The start of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012: six architects’ offices from Istanbul, Mumbai, the Pearl River Delta, São Paulo, Tokyo and the Boston/Washington region will present their megacities in Ingolstadt. They will state the most significant challenges for their regions in terms of future urban construction and mobility. All those who are interested can follow the conference by live streaming, record it by means of satellite coordinates or integrate it directly on their website.

Audi would like to continue to learn from cities – and to play a part in shaping the urban future. For the second round of the Audi Urban Future Award in 2012, six international architecture offices will take a close look at six metropolitan regions: Boston/Washington, Istanbul, Mumbai, Pearl River Delta, São Paulo and Tokyo. Using these urban areas as an example, the participants in the Award will create for them customized visions for individual mobility in the future. The most innovative and forward-looking project will receive the second Audi Urban Future Award in October in Istanbul.

Audi is playing a part in the DLD Conference in Munich. Representatives from industry, science and culture discuss the digital future during the three-day conference, which draws international participants.

At the start of the IAA International Motor Show in Frankfurt, 450 international experts accepted Audi’s invitation to discuss the future of cities at the first Audi Urban Future Summit. The positions and theses of a high-caliber group of experts outlined exciting perspectives for the mobility of the future.

The cities of this world will change. Space, time, air – resources are becoming scarce. How can we create a good quality of life in the cities of the future, and in what ways will people be mobile? Yesterday, at the first Audi Urban Future Summit in Frankfurt am Main, the experts were in agreement: dialogue and cooperation are the key to a better future. Specialists from a great variety of disciplines discussed the future of urban mobility in The Squaire at Frankfurt Airport.

The look of the city of the future remains an unknown. It would be too simplistic to conceive it only from the perspective of an automobile maker. Audi is therefore seeking to involve international experts in the debate in the context of the Audi Urban Future Initiative. The Audi Urban Future Summit will take place on 12 th September, immediately before the 64 th International Auto Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, Germany. It will focus on the subject of “ENERGIES – What forces will change the cities of the future?”

Five up-and-coming New York architecture practices have been thinking about urban planning, traffic and ecology in the year 2030 for the Audi Urban Future Initiative. The project is part of the Festival of Ideas for the New City, an event held by the New Museum in New York from 4 to 8 May for which the Audi Urban Future Initiative is a sponsor. In cooperation with the architecture community Architizer, a model has been created, known as the Audi Urban Future: Project New York. This installation illustrates the ideas of the architects on a scale of 1:1200 in the Openhouse Gallery, New York, from 7 to 9 May.

Peter Schwarzenbauer, AUDI AG Board Member for Marketing and Sales, opened the events of the Audi Urban Future Initiative in New York on Saturday, 7 May. The exhibition of the Audi Urban Future Award 2010 in the Openhouse Gallery and the discussion meetings on the subject of mobility in the future made a long-term contribution in the context of the Festival of Ideas for the New City.

The word “Manhattan” conjures up images in everyone’s mind: The skyline, Time Square, Central Park and a city that never sleeps. And what about “Manhattan 2030”? Perhaps the skyscrapers are somewhat taller, the streets even more crowded? Anything is possible. That’s why five up-and-coming New York architecture practices have been thinking about urban planning, traffic and ecology in the year 2030 for the Audi Urban Future Initiative.

How might Manhattan appear in the year 2030? The Audi Urban Future Initiative was established to look into the future of megacities and individual mobility. At the Festival of Ideas for the New City, held by the New Museum in New York from 4 to 8 May, Audi is bringing together architects, designers, artists and researchers to visualize ideas about the future of New York. Following the Audi Urban Future Award 2010 in Venice, this is the second venue of the Initiative.

The Audi Urban Future Award 2010 was the first step. Now Audi is linking this architectural competition to the long-term Audi Urban Future Initiative. Audi will hold constructive discussions with renowned experts about urban development and urban mobility, and incorporate the results into the work of the company on a permanent basis.

Mayer’s project focuses on digital technology, but with a difference: The starting point is an existing urban environment. This leads to interesting, unexpected results. Technology here does not determine outcomes, but becomes an instrument for opening up urban space to multiple interventions, meanings, possibilities. One of these effects is to make room in our dense cities, room for diverse uses. This way of conceiving of technology urbanizes technology, and in this urbanizing of technology also lies a project of humanizing our cities.

With the Audi Urban Future Award, Audi brings six international architectural firms together in a competition to develop models and visions of the future interplay between mobility, architecture and the city. The participants met to exchange thoughts with Audi experts in Ingolstadt and then elaborated their ideas as part of a workshop in London. The finale is in August; the projects will then be on display during the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

Bjarke Ingels is considered a shooting star of the international architecture scene. Together with the architects of the Bjarke Ingels Group in Copenhagen, the 35-year-old Dane is currently developing projects in Kazakhstan, Mexico and numerous other countries. His unconventional designs stand out with their fresh approach to complex urban constellations, which are often resolved through simple means and propose new typologies.

The young practice Standardarchitecture has, in a brief period of time, established a reputation as Chinese avant-garde. The experimental and at times provocative designs of the Beijing architects often employ simple materials such as bamboo and brick. These materials extend into the cityscape like urban landscapes or mediate between nature and architecture, thereby always taking cultural and historical aspects into consideration. Before Zhang Ke set up his practice in Beijing in 2001, he studied at the Tsinghua University and at Harvard Graduate School. Today, Standardarchitecture has four partners altogether. In 2006, the architects were recognized with the first prize of the China Architecture Award.

In visionary designs, the interdisciplinary Berlin architectural practice J. Mayer H. Architects sounds out the interface between architecture, urban planning, art installations and the development of new materials. Their projects stand out through a cultural significance that unites construction and sustainability, urbanity and architectural form. Jürgen Mayer H. studied in Stuttgart, New York and Princeton before founding his practice in 1996. He received the Mies van der Rohe Award Emerging Architects Special Mention (2003) and, among others, the International Architecture Award of the Chicago Athenaeum (2009). Mayer H. has taught at the Architectural Association in London, at Harvard University and at the University of Toronto in Canada.

The New York practice of Elisabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and Charles Renfro is considered an intellectual think tank for visions that test the limits of possibility. Elisabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio met at the Cooper Union School of Architecture before they founded their studio in 1979. Along with Charles Renfro, who joined them as a partner in 2004, they taught for several years at various universities. Among the many awards the architects have received are the Cooper Union Urban Visionary Award (2006) and the Medal of Honor of the American Institute of Architects (2010).

Enric Ruiz-Geli and his interdisciplinary architectural team Cloud 9 in Barcelona work at the interface between architecture and art, digital processes and technological material development. The architects’ multifaceted projects include stage sets and buildings, installations and industrial products, and are realized together with various collaborative partners. Cloud 9 is committed to the use of new technological developments and the performative character of architecture, which creates intelligent structures in emulation of nature.

With complex masterplans and large-scale housing projects, Alison Brooks Architects have established a reputation as perceptive specialists for architectonic and urban planning contexts. A site-specific and experimental approach is characteristic for the designs of the London-based architects. Prior to founding ABA in England in 1996, Canadian-born Alison Brooks was a partner at Ron Arad Associates. Today, she teaches Urban Design and Housing at the Architectural Association, and her projects have been recognized with numerous prestigious awards, including the Stephen Lawrence Prize (2006), the Manser Medal for UK Projects (2007), and the Stirling Prize (2008).

The award will be bestowed for the first time in 2010, and thereafter every two years. It is endowed with a prize of 100,000 Euro. For each award cycle, six international architectural firms will be invited to develop their vision for the future of a particular theme. The Audi Urban Future Award 2010 focuses on architectural and urban planning concepts with respect to mobility in an urban context. A dedicated website will monitor the progress of each contribution throughout all stages of development, and the process will also be documented and discussed in publications. Additionally, an integral part of the first award cycle will be an internal workshop on the selected theme, to be followed by a public conference. Finally, all six visions for the future will be presented in a comprehensive exhibition in Venice parallel to the 12th Architecture Biennale, and an international jury will select the winner.
www.audi-urban-future-award.com

The Audi Urban Future Award aims to establish a dialogue on the synergy of mobility, architecture and urban development by means of a tangible view into the future, without losing sight of the perspective of the Audi brand as an automobile manufacturer.

The urban life of the future will inevitably necessitate a careful examination of sustainable energy management and adapted forms of mobility. As a globally active automobile manufacturer, AUDI AG is aware of the responsibility it carries with respect to this development. With the Audi Urban Future Award, Audi is promoting architectural and urban planning visions. Six international architectural firms are participating in the competition for the most highly remunerated German architectural award.

Further information about the official fuel consumption figures and official, specific CO2 emissions of new passenger cars can be found in the “Guide to fuel consumption, CO2 emissions and electricity consumption of new cars,” which is available free of charge from all sales outlets and from DAT (Deutsche Automobil Treuhand GmbH), Hellmuth-Hirth-Strasse 1, 73760 Ostfildern-Scharnhausen, Germany (http://www.dat.de).